Orbiting – what 2018’s answer to ‘ghosting’ means for your dating life

Name: Orbiting.

Age: The name is brand new, but the behaviour is old.

Appearance: Gone but not forgotten.

Great, something to do with traffic management assessment. Finally, a topic I understand. Sorry, but this is about dating.

Is it a sex thing? Because, now I come to think of it, orbiting sounds gross. It’s worse, I’m afraid. Orbiting is a break-up tactic.

OK, explain everything. Well, first, have you ever been ghosted?

I don’t know. Let’s start there. Ghosting is when someone breaks up with you by effectively disappearing off the face of the planet. They don’t text, they don’t call, they don’t answer their door when you drunkenly hammer at it at 3am.

My word, how cruel. Wait until you get a load of orbiting. Orbiting is ghosting with occasional impersonal check-ins.

Such as? Let’s say you’ve been ghosted. You’ve been jilted and there’s no sign of them anywhere. Then, all of a sudden, you see that they’ve viewed one of your Instagram stories.

Right. And then, one night, they favourite one of your tweets. They might even like a Facebook post or two if they’re feeling especially bold.

So it’s back on! No! Because they still aren’t replying to your texts. There’s no direct communication whatsoever. They’re casually reminding you that they exist, but also that they don’t care enough about you to get in touch and actually explain themselves.

Dear God in heaven! I’m a psychological mess! Exactly. And this is why orbiting is such a nefarious break-up strategy. The term was coined by Man Repeller writer Anna Iovine, who describes it as “close enough to see each other; far enough to never talk”. Her conclusion is that orbiting is either a power move, a sign of regret or an act of outright stupidity.

Which one is it? Who knows. Some are even calling it a redundant categorisation. A recent Vice piece, for example, said that orbiting was still a form of ghosting, but in this instance the ghosts just happen to be visible.

Right. So what you’re saying is that orbiters are basically ghosts you can see, like Slimer from Ghostbusters. Well, no, that’s not really what I was …

It shouldn’t really be called orbiting in that case. It should be called Sliming. No. Sliming is definitely a sex thing.

Now I feel disgusted as well as appalled by the inherent cruelty of the human courtship ritual. Promise me you’ll never join Tinder. You’ll end up feeling both of those things all day long.

Do say: “If you want to break up with someone, why not try orbiting them?”

Don’t say: “In my day, we just faked our own deaths.”